ESPN Golf

The best part about the calendar turning over from 2007 to '08? That's easy. No more insufferable, overcorporatized hit-and-giggles at cookie-cutter locales with the final product only slightly resembling professional golf.

The worst part? No more "best of" lists. The Weekly 18 couldn't get enough, from Best Songs of 2007 to Best Celebrity Scandals of 2007 to Best Reasons to Have Best Of Lists in 2007 (which actually appeared in the form of a smart think piece in a reputable mag).

Well, why wait another 51 weeks until noting the "best of" moments for the golf season? Sure, only one tournament -- the PGA Tour's season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship -- has been played so far this year, but that didn't stop the Weekly 18 from chronicling the best of 2008.

No Tiger, no Phil, no Padraig, no Adam … no problem. If the PGA Tour season ended today -- and don't worry, there are still 47 tournaments left to play -- the Player of the Year would be Daniel Chopra, a native of Sweden who was raised in India and makes his home in Orlando. Is he the next great player or simply a beneficiary of the circumstances? We tend to believe he falls somewhere in the middle, though he joins an impressive winners' list at Kapalua that includes Vijay Singh, Stuart Appleby, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Jim Furyk, Tiger Woods and David Duval since the event moved to the Aloha State in 1999.

"I felt very comfortable out there," Chopra said after beating Steve Stricker on the fourth hole of a playoff. "The golf course was designed by me, I'm guessing. There's not a golf course out there that suits me more. I just loved it from the moment I saw it."

Like we've always said, the best part about winning this tournament is that everything else is gravy. Chopra can now concentrate on majors and making the European Ryder Cup team while knowing he'll return to Kapalua next year and his PGA Tour status is intact through the 2010 season.

Throughout the week, Chopra's caddie, Mitch Knox, wore a white cap with the famed Masters logo on the front. It represented more than a souvenir. Because Chopra's victory at the Ginn sur Mer Classic came after the conclusion of last year's FedEx Cup playoffs, he didn't qualify for the 2008 Masters field. Just seconds after clinching victory at Kapalua, the newest champ already had Augusta National on his mind. "I get to go to Augusta," he said of what the victory meant to him. "My lifelong dream."

In the days before the tournament, Chopra revealed that despite having never played at Kapalua, he knew the course very well. "I'm fairly familiar with most of the holes and the shots," he said. "I've played it on PlayStation a bunch."

Little-known fact: Until the USGA abolished the rule in 1950 (and the R&A one year later), there was no relief from a stymie in match-play competition. This means players weren't allowed to mark their golf balls on the green; instead, opponents were forced to putt around the ball itself. Well, the old practice wasn't in use during Sunday's playoff at Kapalua, but there was a similar effect. When Stricker putted for eagle from off the green, his ball hit Chopra's ball mark, causing it to hop in the air and take a slight left-hand turn. The result? Stricker fell about six feet short of the hole, then missed his birdie putt, too, only receiving new life when Chopra failed from a similar spot on the green.

Hmmm, let's see … should this award go to the various players who discussed the Bermuda greens and trade winds at Kapalua, droning on about the state of their games? Or to the guy who tried to fly to Hawaii with bullets in his carry-on bag? Yeah, exactly. And so we present the best of Boo Weekley:

"We checked all the luggage and everything was good, and my little tote bag had to go through the screen. I had it in my bag, and I used it for hunting and I left two bullets in it. That kind of was like, right out of the gate, started the whole week for me. They put the red flags on me. I had the cops there. I thought I was going to jail. … I reckon I just left two bullets way down in the bottom of it. I couldn't find them, and they found them on that screen. … I just begged and pleaded. I just sat there and shook my head like I was an idiot, you know? Really, I was like, they're going to do their normal search, pull all my stuff out. They didn't say nothing. The security guys come up, the actual police guys, the dog and stuff, and he's sniffing around at my heels."

Weekley eventually did find his way to Kapalua and, believe it or not, his opening presser of the season included more gems than just the story about being detained at the airport.

On the view from his hotel room: "It's a pretty view. I live on the water down where I live. It's just a different name for it. It's called the Pacific here instead of the gulf."

On his offseason workout regimen: "I only hit my clubs one time to pull an iron out of it to look at it and see if it was the one I was going to switch out before I came over here, and then I said I'd just leave it like it is, zipped it right back up. I ain't even took it out of the gun case -- or my bag. I've still got bullets in my head. It's still hunting season back home. I was thinking hunting."

On Colin Montgomerie's reaction toward him: "I heard he kind of liked me." After being told that Monty wants to be like him: "He better come on home with me then. We've got a lot of changing to do."

On what he did after having a ladder fall on him while putting up a shelf at his home: "I got up out from under it first, shook it off a little bit and then went and got a cold one." An ice pack? "No, I'm talking about a cold one."

Weekley won the pre-tourney news conference award by as many strokes as Tiger won the 2000 U.S. Open, but that doesn't mean others weren't on top of their games, too. Mark Calcavecchia takes runner-up honors with the following:

On whether the Mercedes-Benz is the easiest tournament of the year to win: "Wow, never thought of it that way. You know, I guess if you look at it that way. There's 31 guys here this year and there's 30 at the Tour Championship, but Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson aren't here, so that increases your chances of winning greatly."

On recent communication with Woods: "I texted him the other day when I was hiking up the mountain in Phoenix. I said, 'Hiking a mountain. May die.' He texted me back and said, 'You must be on the Plantation Course.' I texted him something else pretty funny, too, that I don't remember."

On looking back at his career: "Maybe if I would have practiced a little bit harder or been in better shape, I would have won more. … It's like losing weight. I'll lose weight in December -- no, I'll lose weight next March. Or I'm not going to drink for a month. No, I can't do that, the Rush concert is next week. It's like that my whole life. I'm going to work out every day, whatever. No, can't do that. There's always something that comes up to screw that up. That's kind of the way that is through your whole career. OK, I'm going to practice my ass off in 2008. I can't leave the course fast enough, and it's the first day of the year. I played nine holes in a cart and I've had enough. I'm ready to go home. So much for that theory."

On whether he has ever gone bowling with Woody Austin: "No. I've played blackjack with him. That's a treat. … He is without a doubt the unluckiest blackjack player in history. Just ask him. Nobody gets screwed more than him. Every time he doubles down, he gets a 2. Dealers are always flipping off five-, six-card 21s on him. … He turns as red as this flower here. He gets all pissed off. It's kind of funny to watch."

"I'm a man! I'm 43!" -- Oklahoma State alum Scott Verplank to a reporter, referencing football coach Mike Gundy's outburst in the fall, when asked about receiving a 1-stroke penalty in the opening round.

Kapalua's Plantation Course is known for its wide fairways and large greens -- and many players took full advantage, getting a leg up on their non-competing peers in some major statistical categories. Verplank led the field in driving accuracy, finding the fairway in 56 of 60 attempts (93.33 percent), and Nick Watney was tops with 67 greens in regulation (93.06 percent). By comparison, Jose Coceres led the PGA Tour in driving accuracy at 75.47 percent last year and Tiger Woods led in GIR at 71.02 percent.

If the Mercedes-Benz Championship were a select LPGA or Champions tour event, Mike Weir very well might have a new trophy right now. After a torrid close to last season in which he won the Frys.com Open and defeated Woods at the Presidents Cup, Weir was the 54-hole leader at Kapalua. He quickly lost the top spot on the leaderboard with a bogey on the first hole of the final round, however, and wound up shooting 3-under 70 en route to a solo fourth-place finish.

Call it a sign of the times. Pre-tournament co-favorites Furyk and Singh each led the field in fewest bogeys (three), yet they finished T-5 and T-12, respectively. What does it mean? Like most tournaments on tour, the Mercedes-Benz Championship rewards birdie binges more than safe, steady play.

As the final tournament winner of the 2007 season, Stephen Ames had honors off the first tee Thursday. (In the opening round, players tee off in reverse order of when their first victory of last season occurred.) Just a few minutes later, he drained a curling right-to-left 20-footer for the season's first birdie. Because of the odd-numbered field, Ames played a solo round, finishing in just over three hours.

Before teeing it up at Kapalua, Weekley had played golf only once since competing in the World Cup two months ago -- and that was in his front yard with his young son and using a borrowed set of clubs. Told by a PGA Tour media official before the tourney, "I believe you told one of the PGA Tour guys that you have a better chance of shooting 82 this week than 62," Weekley responded, "Yes, sir. Yeah, you can go with that. I ain't played no golf. Ain't no telling where it's heading." Boo followed by shooting an opening-round 80, but he improved the next three days, carding subsequent rounds of 74-68-66.

With apologies to the Golf Channel's original programming, Watney was the recipient of the biggest break in the season's opening round. Climbing up the leaderboard late in the day, Watney pulled a drive left that appeared to be heading out of bounds (or close to it), only to have the ball hit the cart of the channel's guest announcer, Billy Andrade, and ricochet into the fairway. Watney used the fortunate carom on his way to shooting 5-under 68, good for the first-round lead.

It wasn't exactly the stuff of Joe Namath, but an article on TigerWoods.com this week concluded with Woods' proclamation that winning the Grand Slam this year is "easily within reason." For a player who often shies away from predictions, preferring to let his clubs do the talking and others do the praising, Woods broached a line we haven't seen him cross often. It will be interesting to hear his follow-up comments the next time he meets with the media, two weeks from now at the Buick Invitational. (For more on this subject, read the ESPN.com Alternate Shot piece.)

When the Weekly 18 decides to take a "mental holiday" and call in sick, we make sure to stay far away from any potential run-ins with the boss. That usually means 18 holes at the local track, a little lunch, another 18 holes and directly back to the home office as paranoia starts setting in. If Ferris Bueller taught us anything, it's that hovering in the limelight can bring only unwanted (yet hilarious) hijinks. Yet there was Woods this week, playing hooky from the season-opening event while sitting courtside at a pair of Orlando Magic basketball games. Woods was caught on camera throughout both contests, and his likeness graced the highlight packages those nights. Here's hoping his boss doesn't find out.

The recent decision by Michelle Wie's camp to skip the upcoming Sony Open (though truth be told, she wasn't offered a sponsor's exemption) and, likely, any other PGA Tour opportunities this year was met with a collective "Thank goodness!" by players and fans alike. Wie, a Stanford freshman, reportedly will focus on strengthening her game and competing in select LPGA events before even thinking about the possibility of competing against the men again. Let's hope the public backlash against the 18-year-old for her previous efforts diminishes now that she has redirected her goals.

Leading the European Tour's Web site Sunday was the notification that there are only 1,000 more days until the 2010 Ryder Cup in Wales. That's right, the 2010 Ryder Cup -- let alone the fact that the biennial competition will take place once before that, at Valhalla this September. We can debate all we'd like about why the United States team is soundly defeated every other year, but it can never be questioned for whom this tournament is more important. This latest announcement is proof once again that no tournament -- the Open Championship included -- is bigger in Europe.

You might've guessed that any mention of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic on "SportsCenter" two weeks before the event would have tournament organizers in a gleeful tizzy. Uh, not so much. The event, which features a pro-am portion during the actual competition, was in the news this week because it coincides with Major League Baseball's next hearing before Congress -- and Roger Clemens has been asked to participate in both events. And to answer your next question, no, the PGA Tour's new drug testing policy does not include pro-am competitors.

Jason Sobel is ESPN.com's golf editor. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn3.com.